Nige­ria to open of­fice to mon­i­tor ac­cess to fi­nance, train­ing for SMEs, says min­is­ter

HOPE OF A BET­TER deal for the MSMEs has been rekin­dled fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion of the Fed­eral Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment to open a project mon­i­tor­ing of­fice on ac­cess to fi­nance and train­ing for the busi­ness out­fits un­der the Na­tional En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, (NEDP) Aisha Abubakar, min­is­ter of state for In­dus­try and In­vest­ment has said.

The pro­gramme is geared to­wards back­ing the growth of MSMES with in­creased ac­cess to af­ford­able fi­nanc­ing and skills de­vel­op­ment for youths nurs­ing en­ter­pris­ing ideas.

Speak­ing while open­ing the Sim­ply Nige­rian Fair which had many en­trepreneurs show­cas­ing their works in fash­ion, food and bev­er­ages, home wares and horticulture among oth­ers, Abubakar said en­cour­ag­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial ideas among the youth was im­per­a­tive to the suc­cess of gov­ern­ment’s bid to cut the rate of poverty in the na­tion.

“With the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pres­i­den­tial ex­ec­u­tive or­ders, poli­cies and pro­gramme de­signed by gov­ern­ment are to sup­port and en­cour­age ease of do­ing busi­ness, you can be rest as­sured that the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment is fully com­mit­ted, with re­lent­less and per­sis­tence drive, to SME’s align­ing with indige­nous busi­nesses on the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­omy by en­sur­ing wealth, more jobs, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment are en­hanced,” said Abubakar who was rep­re­sented by Bayeru Ga­far, the manag­ing direc­tor Tafawa Balewa Square Square Man­age­ment Board.

Ac­cord­ing to her, SMEDAN, an agency un­der the Min­istry, is also work­ing with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Bank of In­dus­try and NEXlM to de-risk its loan port­fo­lios to small scale busi­nesses.

The min­istry, she said, is also sup­port­ing the BoI to em­bark on SMEs rat­ing, and how to en­sure eas­ier credit lend­ing to those that meet risk-ac­cep­tance cri­te­ria for loan ac­cess from the Bank and also to have a credit registry data.

The data is ex­pected to mon­i­tor credit be­hav­iour of peo­ple and im­prove ac­cess of credit to them. “What is im­por­tant is that we want Nige­ri­ans to know that bor­row­ing from the Bank of lndus­try is not to ac­cess your own share of the na­tional cake,” she said.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the min­is­ter, Aisha Abubakar vis­it­ing ex­hi­bi­tion stands at the SNF in the com­pany of Temi Shen­jobi, the founder.